Administrative

Marion “Oatsie” (Leiter) Charles, a friend of Ian Fleming who helped inspire the surname of Felix Leiter, died earlier this month, according to an obituary in The Washington Post.

She died on Dec. 5 at the age of 99, the newspaper said. The Post described her as “among the last of the grande dames of Georgetown and Newport, R.I.,… She broke bread with President John F. Kennedy and drank with spy novelist Ian Fleming.”

She married Thomas Leiter in 1942, who she later divorced.

Here’s an excerpt from The Post’s obituary about the creator of James Bond.

During World War II, she made a passing acquaintance of Fleming, the future author of the James Bond British spy novels. They met again in Jamaica in the winter of 1949 during the social season there.

“I’d gone to a party, and a great friend of mine was very much in love with Ian, or thought she was,” she recounted to a Fleming website. “And he was treating her in the most atrocious way. And with the arrogance of youth, I walked up to Mr. Fleming when I was introduced to him and said, ‘Mr. Fleming, I consider you’re a cad.’

“And he looked at me and said, ‘Mrs. Leiter, you’re indeed right. Shall we have a drink on it?’ ”

She said she was taken aback by his charm, and they became friends. When Fleming published his first Bond novel, “Casino Royale,” in 1953, he partially named the CIA agent, Felix Leiter, after her husband.

John Cork, director of a number of James Bond documentaries for home video, wrote a story for the website of Ian Fleming Publications (the same one cited in The Post obit) about Charles.

It described Fleming attending a 1960 dinner party at John Kennedy’s home in Washington. The future president invited Fleming after seeing him with Marion Charles. Others present at the dinner party were Joseph Alsop, a columnist “and part-time CIA operative” and John Bross, a future deputy director the agency, according to Cork’s article.

At the gathering Fleming was asked for ideas for how the U.S. might deal with Fidel Castro in Cuba. One of Fleming’s ideas was for the CIA to drop leaflets promoting the notion “that nuclear fallout was collecting in men’s beards” on the island nation, Cork wrote. Men wearing beards would become impotent. That would prompt men to shave their beards, and beards had become part of the image of the Castro revolution.

Marion Charles was interviewed for some of the Cork-directed documentaries.

UPDATE (6:50 p.m. New York time): I rewatched the Cork-directed Ian Fleming biography documentary that’s on the home video release of The Living Daylights. In it, Charles provided this anecdote:

“I think I made Ian Fleming in a curious way. Jack Kennedy rang me up one morning and said, ‘Oats I’m sick. Have you anything to read?’ ‘Yes, so you like spy stories?'”

The book, according to the documentary, was From Russia With Love. That book, in 1961, turned up in a list of Kennedy’s ten favorite books published in Life magazine. That, in turn, greatly helped sales of Fleming’s novels in the United States.

This week’s 10th anniversary of Casino Royale generated a number of stories crediting the 21st James Bond film with saving the franchise.

However, this wasn’t the first time the series, in the eyes of some, had been saved. What follows is a list of four.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971): Sean Connery returned to the Eon Productions fold for a one-off after 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman weren’t looking for Connery’s return. But United Artists executive David V. Picker was. As a result of efforts by Picker, Connery was offered, and accepted, a $1.25 million salary coupled with other financial goodies. John Gavin, who had been signed as Bond, was paid off.

Diamonds rebounded to $116 million, better than Twice but still not at Thunderball levels. Nevertheless. Picker has argued his strategy of getting Connery back kept the series going.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977): The 10th 007 film was made after Broccoli and Saltzman dissolved their partnership, with UA buying out Saltzman.

What’s more, the box office for the previous series entry, The Man With the Golden Gun, had plunged almost 40 percent from Roger Moore’s Bond debut, Live And Let Die.

As a result, there was anxiety associated with the production. Spy ended up re-establishing Bond, in particular the Roger Moore version. The movie produced a popular song, Nobody Does It Better, and the film received three Oscar nominations.

GoldenEye (1995): The 17th Bond adventure made its bow after a six-year hiatus, marked by legal fights. Albert R. Broccoli, at one point, put Danjaq and Eon on the market, though no sale took place.

The question was whether 007, now in the person of Pierce Brosnan, could resume being a successful series. The previous entry, Licence to Kill, didn’t do well in the U.S., finishing No. 4 in its opening weekend, even though it was the only new movie release released that weekend.

Meanwhile, GQ.com ran a article saying Casino was the best 007 film while Forbes.com aruged the movie “provides a helpful template in terms of doing the reboot just right.”

If Casino saved the franchise, it wasn’t necessarily in a financial sense. 2002’s Die Another Day was a success at the box officce. But Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson were having a creative mid-life crisis.

Richard Graydon, a stuntman in several James Bond films, died Dec. 22, according to an obituary at the MI6 JAMES BOND WEBSITE.

Two of Graydon’s signature stunts involved cable cars. In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, he doubled star George Lazenby, in a sequence where Bond is supposed to be on a cable as a cable car approaches. The official 007 Twitter feed on Dec. 23, posted a picture in connection with the movie’s 45th anniversary.

Stuntman Richard Graydon doubles for George Lazenby for the escape from Piz Gloria in ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE pic.twitter.com/o8uGzvAS9u

A decade later, Graydon doubled for Roger Moore atop a Rio cable car in a scene where 007 is depicted as fighting Jaws. In the documentary Inside Moonraker, director Lewis Gilbert described himself as transfixed watching, having to be reminded to yell cut. Graydon shows up as an interview subject in a number of the 007 film documentaries directed by John Cork.

Graydon also got an on-screen credit in the end titles of 1983’s Octopussy as Francisco, the Fearless, one of the acts in Octopussy’s circus.

Oswald Morris, a distinguished director of photography whose work included part of one James Bond movie, has died at age 98.

Morris photographed films of various genres, according to his IMDB.COM BIO. They included Moulin Rouge, Moby Dick, A Farewell to Arms, Lolita, The Hill, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and The Man Who Would Be King.

His one Bond contribution was 1974’s The Man With The Golden Gun, the second Roger Moore 007 film.

Morris was hired to replace Ted Moore, who had fallen ill after completing location shooting in the Far East. Morris took over photography of the interiors. That included the scenes at the “fun house” of assassin Francisco Scaramanga, which the assassin uses for training. In the John Cork-directed documentary Inside The Man With the Golden Gun, Morris commented shooting on the set with its many mirrors was “a pain in the butt” to photograph. Morris also had tight deadlines to meet Christmas 1974 release dates.

Neither Morris nor Ted Moore would return to the 007 series. Morris won an Oscar (for Fiddler On The Roof) and was nominated for two others, ACCORDING TO IMDB.COM

You can CLICK HERE to read an obituary by The Hollywood Reporter, HERE for Variety.com’s obit and HERE one by The Guardian.

Little Nellie, which appeared in the 1967 James Bond film You Only Live Twice, was an aerial equivalent of the Aston Martin DB5 that was featured in Goldfinger and Thunderball.

In the John Cork-directed documentary Inside You Only Live Twice, YOLT production designer Ken Adam says he heard a BBC interview with Wallis about the mini-helicopter. Adam checked it out and made design changes so the aircraft could included in the fifth James Bond film. The documentary details how Wallis had to make many flights to produce several minutes of screen time for the 1967 movie.

An excerpt from the obituary:

Retired Wing Cdr Ken Wallis, who lived near Dereham, Norfolk, died on Sunday, his daughter confirmed.

Born in Ely, his first solo flight was in 1937. Thirty years later he doubled as Sean Connery’s Bond for an explosive aerial sequence in You Only Live Twice.

His daughter Vicky said her father passed away after “a long and successful life doing what he wanted”.

(snip)

Honoured with an MBE in 1996, he piloted 24 wartime missions over northern Europe in Wellington bombers, before spending 20 years engaged in weapons research in the Royal Air Force.

Here’s a sample of how Little Nellie appeared on screen:

UPDATE (Sept. 13): To view The New York Times’ obituary on Ken Wallis (published Sept. 9): just CLICK HERE.

On hand were Michael VanBlaricum, president of the Ian Fleming Foundation, and John Cork, who has directed many of documentaries that accompany James Bond movie DVDs.

Near the start of the program, called Focus, Cork said that Bond was “significantly different” from other characters who had come before because he was part of a “post World War II universe” who could be the “knife that cut the Gordian Knot” of complicated post-war problems. “He can be portrayed as a hero,” Cork said. “He still does that.”

VanBlaricum said newer movies, including the 2006 Casino Royale, “really did follow the James bond style created by Ian Fleming” and there’s “a lot of Fleming in Daniel Craig’s performance.”

Cork, who formerly was involved with the foundation, observes that the various actors have brought things to the 007 role. Regarding original film 007 star Sean Connery, he says: “They wouldn’t have had a job if Connery wasn’t so good at what he did.”

To listen to the entire program, CLICK HERE. When that page comes up, go to the left. There are icons to either listen to the program or to download it.

3 p.m. central time, April 12: Michael VanBlaricum, co-founder of the Ian Fleming Foundation, delivers a talk about items on display and how his collection of Ian Fleming novels evolved. Location: Room 66 Library, 1408 West Gregory Drive, Urbana, Illinois.

7 p.m., April 13: Concert featuring music from James Bond films by the University of Illinois concert jazz band. Location: Spurlock Museaum Knight Auditorium, 600 South Gregory, Urbana, Illinois.

April 26-28: James Bond film festival. Besides movies being shown, there will be discussions about the films. Those talks will be led by John Cork, who made a series of documentaries about the making of the 007 films that are on DVDs as extras. Schedule of films and activities will be available at http://www.spurlock.illinois.edu (you can also try THIS LINK; no titles or times are listed yet). Location: 600 South Gregory, Urbana, Illinois.

The university is at Urbana-Champaign, in the east-central part of Illinois near where I-57 and I-74 intersect. You can view a map of the University of Illinois campus by CLICKING HERE.

If you want to go the April 12-14 weekend, expect to stay well outside the Urbana-Champaign area. There are other university events that weekend and hotels are booked.